In-ho, Myung-gi, Sang-woo (wip)

I previously wrote about the similarities between In-ho and Sang-woo, and now that season 3 is over we see that Myung-gi is similar to them both.

Myung-gi and Sang-woo are both smart, able to win games through distracting others. Outside of the game Myung-gi and Sang-woo are both finance guys, and mention futures trading as the next big way to get rich even though they're deep in debt because of their financial risks. I watched a video that explained that "futures" trading in Korean is a pun because it can also mean gifts, typically for a girlfriend. The accidental (I think) conflation of love and money is quick but telling of how we treat love in our lives. Sang-woo and In-ho kill people in their sleep, like Sang-woo with Sae-byoek and and In-ho with his other finalists. Myung-gi is capable of this violence too. In The Starry Night, we see Myungi-gi first hesitate to stab the player in the black & neon drawings room, but gradually gets used to killing with Nam-gyu to the point where he stabs Hyun-ju in the back without knowing who she is. 

All three of them are affected by killing, and have some humanity, but it becomes easier and easier every time they do kill. 

Remind me to come back and clip shit because it makes so much more sense to outsiders when you actually see the scenes not just read someone's thoughts about it.
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In-ho's the most far gone out of the three of them. He won the games 8 years ago and time has passed. His wife and child are dead even though he has billions of won. He was rewarded with a stylish room and luxury goods. He has killed more and more people behind a mask that obscures most of his vision. He orders around soldiers who are also terrible people trapped in this game and he talks to the VIPs who fund it. In this world, I wonder who designs it. 

I had hope that when Myung-gi first asks Gi-hun to not cross the triangle tower, his plan was to sacrifice himself and Gi-hun so his baby could get all of the money. But that may be too optimistic of a mindset, as it seems like most people thought he was committed to killing his baby earlier. When Myung-gi holds his baby over the edge screaming "I'll do it, I swear I will," that is when I fully believed him. Yim Si-wan is a phenomenal actor and I saw the break in Myung-gi's mind of having gone too far, of becoming an undeniable monster. It mirrors In-ho's terror after stabbing his finalists; Sang-woo's look of devastating clarity after killing Sae-byoek like "I did this."